


Bottom of the River

by ClockworkCourier



Category: Sengoku Basara
Genre: Body Horror, Fratricide, Gen, pretentious tagging!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-06
Updated: 2013-04-06
Packaged: 2017-12-07 15:01:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/749851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ClockworkCourier/pseuds/ClockworkCourier
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A mother's love is often expected to be constant. One must wonder how constant she can keep it in the growing shadow of a dragon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bottom of the River

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the Delta Rae song. Warnings: some gory stuff, mostly trippy writing, unbeta’d, and misdirected motherly affections.
> 
> Also, the lullaby she sings is called the ‘Takeda Lullaby’, and includes a whole line about how mean a baby is for crying. A+ parenting afoot.
> 
> Originally posted on Tumblr!

The Lord’s gonna come for your firstborn son

His hair’s on fire and his heart is burning

So go to the river where the water runs

Wash him deep where the tides are turning

\---

 

Once, when Bontenmaru was a baby, still soft-skinned and more often asleep than awake, she sang to him. She cradled him in her arms, the silk of her kimono brushing against his cheek and causing him to scrunch up his face, making the tiniest fold of skin appear on the bridge of his nose. She had smiled, humming to him while he hummed back in that nondescript way that babies did.

“ _How can I be happy even when Bon festival is here?_ ” she sang, gently rocking back and forth. Then, she hummed when she forgot some of the words. It didn’t matter. He was sleeping.

\---

He fell ill in the summer. At first, the handmaids said he had just fallen ill due to a little too much summer heat. Too much time spent chasing crickets in the grass or picking morning glories from their stalks. In a few days, he would be well enough.

She pretended not to hear him cry out in the night. He was too hot, too cold, his clothes were too scratchy, his arms hurt, his face hurt. She went outside the first time she heard him vomit. She nodded minutely when a maid told her that he refused to eat, that he could hardly drink. She hid behind the shrine and covered her ears when the priest said Bontenmaru had the plague that had killed so many children in their village. She cried when he muttered that the boy wouldn’t live to see September.

The only time she visited him was late at night, when she thought he would be sleeping. Every visible inch of his skin was covered in the pox, making her son almost unrecognizable. She covered her nose and mouth with her sleeve, trying to fight back the hot tears that threatened to fall at the edges of her eyes.

Then, he opened his right eye. His left stayed shut.

“Mother?” he whispered, appearing to squint against the darkness.

She said nothing. She couldn’t open her mouth.

He stayed still, then shifted his one-eyed gaze to the ceiling, although it seemed like he didn’t see it at all. “I see something,” he said softly, his voice dreamy. “Maybe it’s a god. I don’t know.”

She didn’t want to know what he was seeing. His eye looked misted over, like a pale film had formed over it.

“Is there a god on the ceiling?” he asked.

“No,” she managed to say. Then, she left without another word.

\---

After the bandages covered Bontenmaru’s right eye, Yoshihime started to look to her second son. Little Kojiro, all big grins and skinned knees, so blissfully unaware of the thundercloud that seemed to hover over their family. His hair was soft under her fingers, and he would sit by her feet as long as she stroked his hair, singing a lullaby to him until his eyes closed. He was perfect, unlike her eldest. Kojiro would be strong. He would be smart. He, at the very least, would be complete.

She decided Kojiro would take Terumune’s place. She swore it on Bontenmaru’s grave, dug out a few months ago, but never filled.

\---

Screams woke her up. Terrible, horrible, bloodcurdling screams. They made her feel sick, and even though she wanted to pretend that she hadn’t heard anything, she ran out into the hall anyway, tailed closely by her handmaids. When she saw a ghost-faced Katakura Kojuro standing outside Bontenmaru’s room, blood on his hands and sprayed across his face, she felt as if her stomach had glazed over with ice.

“I-it’s done,” he managed, and she turned her face away from him when she saw how badly his hands were trembling.

Laying in the room, curled up on the futon, was Bontenmaru. One hand desperately covered his right eye, blood dripping down the crevasses between his fingers, onto his cheek and lips. He turned when he heard her enter. All he did was move his hand away from his face just a bit, but it was enough. There was blood in his mouth, blood on his fingers, an empty hole where his eye had been.

She didn’t know if she was looking at her son, or the ghost of him.

\---

Dragons were symbolic of many things. A dragon could protect a house against fire, or bring the house good fortune. Yet, dragons could be destructive. They could gnash their teeth and tear down every support holding a structure up. They could flex their claws and leave gashes in the earth.

The day Bontenmaru became Masamune, Yoshihime saw a dragon.

\---

Blood still stained the cloth that they had wrapped her husband in. It hung between two poles in the courtyard, airing out after yet another wash to attempt to cleanse it of its macabre markings. That, again, had failed, and she was left to look at the product of betrayal and war. She stared at it for so long that she didn’t hear someone walk up behind her.

“...Mother?” he tried.

She didn’t turn to face him. “What?” she returned, her voice scathing, like air on embers.

He was silent. His sandals shifted in the gravel before she heard him turn away. “Nothing,” he said, sounding wounded.

\---

More ghosts. More blood on sheets and blood on fingers. This time, it was Kojiro. His throat was bared, an angry red gash crossing it, drawing the life out of him with the edge of a sword. Before him, kneeling on the tatami, was Masamune. He was laughing, his shoulders shaking, his fingers clawing the woven mat, rocking back and forth on his knees.

He looked up at her, one eye bright, the other sewn shut. “This is what you wanted, wasn’t it?” he asked. Tears were running down one cheek. Only half his face seemed to regret this. “You wanted one of us dead. You prayed for it.”

“No,” she said, but her voice fell short. She wondered if she had said anything at all.

“You did,” he snarled back, and she could see a dragon coiling, its eyes aflame.

She ran away, her tears growing cold on her face as she ran against the wind. She had to imagine that the screaming and wailing behind her was part of the wind as well.


End file.
